The moment Jiang Muchen stepped into Cold Mist Ravine, he knew something was wrong.
This wasn't ordinary mountain cold.
It was damp, invasive—an insidious chill that slipped through skin and muscle, burrowing straight into the bones. The fog was thick as curdled milk; beyond ten feet, the world dissolved into white. Even stranger was the spiritual energy—so dense it nearly condensed into droplets, yet when drawn into the lungs, it felt like swallowing shards of ice, stabbing painfully through the meridians.
"Circulate your qi," Jiang Muchen whispered. His breath bloomed white, instantly swallowed by the fog. "There's cold poison in this mist."
Faint glows flickered around the four of them, like lonely lanterns drifting in a pale, boundless sea.
Wang Duobao's teeth chattered. "Brother Jiang… people really survive places like this?"
"Firecloud Elder's map won't lie," Jiang Muchen said, unrolling the beast-hide scroll. His finger traced the inked lines. "Follow the stream. The cold spring lies at the ravine's bottom."
The stream was their only guide. Its water ran dark and blue-black, flecked with drifting shards of ice. The soft burble echoed hollowly through the fog, distant and unreal.
After about a stick of incense's time, the sound ahead changed.
No longer the murmur of running water, but a deep, continuous roar—heavy, rhythmic, as though something massive were endlessly crashing down.
"A waterfall," Lu Hanshan said, narrowing his eyes.
Jiang Muchen's heart tightened. Firecloud Elder's words resurfaced in his mind:
Behind the waterfall—there are traces of Ninefold Soul-Returning Grass.
"We go," Jiang Muchen said. "But lightly. Slow your breathing."
They pushed through hanging, slick vines. The fog thinned slightly, revealing a sheer cliff more than thirty feet high, draped in a white ribbon of falling water. The cascade wasn't violent, but the drop slammed into the pool below, spraying mist that crystallized into fine frost midair.
Behind the waterfall lay a dark opening.
The problem was reaching it.
The pool was pitch-dark and bottomless to the eye, radiating bitter cold. Along its edge lay scattered remains—bones. Beast bones tangled with human ones. Some were disturbingly fresh, sinew still clinging to them.
"Plenty of people died here," Zheng Xiaoqi said, voice tight as a drawn bowstring.
Jiang Muchen's gaze swept across the remains, finally settling on a relatively intact skeleton seated cross-legged against a boulder. The robe had long decayed, but at the waist hung a palm-sized cloth pouch.
A storage bag.
Anyone who made it this far into the Medicine Valley wouldn't be empty-handed. Yet for forty years, it had remained untouched.
Because coiled beside the skeleton lay an ice-scale serpent.
Not a juvenile.
An adult—over three meters long, thick as a barrel. Ice-blue scales gleamed with a metallic sheen in the dim light. Its body was coiled thrice, eyes closed as if asleep, yet its forked tongue flicked in and out, tasting every shift in the air.
"Qi Refining Seventh Layer at least," Lu Hanshan muttered, veins standing out on his grip. "Head-on means death."
Jiang Muchen said nothing.
He pushed his perception to its limit.
The serpent's breathing was steady, but with every exhale, the scales near its abdomen trembled—just barely. On the stone beneath it were dark red stains.
Fresh blood.
"It's wounded," Jiang Muchen whispered. "Badly."
Wang Duobao blinked. "What?"
"The belly scales are pale and swollen. That blood's recent. Someone—or something—fought it before us."
Zhou Xiaohuan's eyes lit up. "Then maybe—"
"Which makes it more dangerous," Jiang Muchen said, shaking his head. "A wounded beast is the most sensitive—and the most desperate."
He drew out the jade flute.
"Brother Jiang, you—"
"Wait," Jiang Muchen said as he stepped forward. "I'll talk to it."
Talk?
The others went pale.
Jiang Muchen moved slowly, each step like walking on thin ice. Five meters from the serpent, he stopped and sat cross-legged.
The flute sounded.
Not an imitation of a beast's roar. Not an attack.
It was a low, strange melody—like water dripping against stone, like night wind sighing through rock fissures.
This was the Calming Dirge from the Beast Tongue Chapter of the Resonance of All Spirits—an ancient method once used to soothe spirit beasts. Jiang Muchen knew only the basics.
But he had no other choice.
The serpent opened its eyes.
Vertical pupils like frozen crystals—cold, indifferent, born for killing. Its body uncoiled, head rising, poised to strike.
The flute did not stop.
Jiang Muchen closed his eyes, pouring all his focus into the sound. A faint intent rippled with the notes:
No hostility. No claim. Only passage.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The serpent's movement slowed.
The violence in its gaze dulled. Its tongue flicked less frequently. The head tilted—almost as if listening.
It worked.
Jiang Muchen's chest loosened slightly. Without breaking rhythm, he reached into his robes and drew out a small vial—blood collected earlier from the arrow-spike boar. He smeared a drop along the flute.
The scent of blood spread with the sound.
The serpent's pupils contracted sharply.
But it didn't attack.
Instead, it leaned forward—just a fraction.
To beasts, blood speaks. Not this serpent's blood, but beast blood nonetheless—a message:
I have killed, but not without reason. I offer blood as tribute.
The crudest, most honest form of communication in the Beast Tongue.
The serpent stared at the blood-stained flute for ten long breaths.
Then it lowered its head, recoiled, and closed its eyes again.
Permission.
Jiang Muchen's back was soaked through.
He signaled.
Wang Duobao and the others tiptoed past, Zhou Xiaohuan trembling so badly she nearly collapsed. Together they reached the waterfall.
The roar thundered in their ears.
"Force our way through?" Lu Hanshan frowned.
"Wait." Jiang Muchen crouched, feeling along the pool's edge. His fingers brushed smooth stone—laid in an orderly pattern, like submerged steps leading behind the waterfall.
"There's a path underwater," he said. "Shallow—but—"
Wang Duobao dipped a hand in and yelped. "It's freezing! You'd lock up in seconds!"
Jiang Muchen broke off four small pieces of moonlight lingzhi. "Under the tongue. Protect the heart meridian. Move fast."
Warmth spread through their throats.
"Go."
Jiang Muchen stepped in first.
Cold exploded up his legs—thousands of icy needles stabbing bone-deep. The lingzhi barely shielded his core as numbness crept in. He clenched his jaw and followed the submerged steps.
The water deepened. At the base of the waterfall it rose to his chest, the impact staggering, deafening.
Eyes closed. Feel the stone.
Three steps. Five. Ten—
The ground vanished.
The steps ended.
He sank.
Freezing water swallowed him whole—
A hand shot out, clamping onto his arm.
Lu Hanshan grunted, muscles bulging as he hauled him up. Together they scrambled onto a jutting rock, gasping.
"Thanks—" Jiang Muchen coughed.
Lu Hanshan waved him off, pointing ahead.
Behind the waterfall—an opening.
They locked eyes, then leapt.
The moment they passed the water curtain, the world fell silent.
The roar vanished. Darkness swallowed them, save for faint light spilling from the entrance. The air was damp, moldy—yet beneath it lingered a trace of… medicinal fragrance.
A fire starter flared.
Yellow light revealed a limestone cavern, wide and tall, stalactites hanging like a forest. The ground bore signs of habitation: a stone table, stone stools, a crude alchemy furnace choked with ash.
At the far wall stood a stone bed.
Upon it sat a skeleton.
Robes rotted away, hands sealed in a cultivation mudra upon the knees, head bowed—as if the man had died in meditation.
"Is that…?" Wang Duobao's voice shook.
"Stone-Fool Elder," Jiang Muchen said softly. "The one who vanished forty years ago."
He stopped three steps away and bowed. "Junior trespassed. Apologies for disturbing your rest."
Around the skeleton lay scattered items—empty jade bottles, a broken jade stylus, oddly colored ores. And beside the right hand—
A short sword embedded in stone.
The blade was dull black, unadorned, plain as a fire poker. Yet under Jiang Muchen's perception, it radiated a tightly contained, razor-sharp intent.
Not mundane iron.
He carefully drew it out.
Heavy—far heavier than it looked. The edge was blunt, thick. He fed a thread of spiritual energy into it—
The sword vibrated, emitting a low hum that echoed through the cave.
The hum awakened something.
Light flared across the stone wall before the skeleton—ancient characters traced in glowing mineral dust, long faded but reignited by the resonance.
Three lines appeared:
I devoted my life to metal and stone—and was ultimately undone by them.
Beneath the cold pool lies another heaven. Ninefold transformation—one thread of fate.
Those who read this may take Ink Jade and leave. Remember: do not covet, do not rage, do not cling.
"Ink Jade?" Wang Duobao murmured. "The sword?"
Jiang Muchen nodded, fingers brushing the blade. Ink-patterned Darksteel—a rare material, pitch-black, light-absorbing, unmatched for channeling energy. An assassin's supreme metal.
"Beneath the pool…" Zhou Xiaohuan whispered.
"Ninefold transformation," Lu Hanshan mused. "Technique—or fate."
Jiang Muchen's gaze drifted to the ground beside the bed.
There lay a withered leaf.
Nine-lobed. Translucent. Still faintly pulsing with spiritual energy.
Ninefold Soul-Returning Grass.
Stone-Fool Elder had found it.
But never left.
Jiang Muchen picked up the leaf—
Cold surged through him.
Fragments exploded in his mind:
The depths of the cold pool.
A massive shadow gliding through darkness.
Icy vertical pupils opening.
Agony. Struggle.
Then—release.
The vision shattered.
The leaf fell.
"Brother Jiang?"
"…I'm fine." He steadied his breath.
Stone-Fool Elder hadn't vanished.
He had died.
Died beneath the pool.
And whatever lived down there… was far more terrifying than the ice-scale serpent.
Jiang Muchen stored the Ink Jade sword. They searched the cave—nothing else remained. The storage bag was gone, lost or taken long ago.
"Let's go," Jiang Muchen said. "We still need frost-tear vines."
They passed back through the waterfall.
The serpent still lay coiled. It opened one eye, then closed it again.
This time, the killing intent was gone—replaced by exhaustion.
Jiang Muchen paused.
He placed his last drop of beast blood on a stone, three meters away, and bowed.
A gift. And a farewell.
They followed the stream deeper.
The fog thickened. The cold sharpened.
After another half hour, the map's mark finally appeared—
A frost-laden cliff.
Dozens of crystalline vines hung down, coated in delicate ice, refracting faint rainbow light.
Frost-Tear Vines.
Below them bubbled a square spring, water clear as glass, white vapor curling from its surface.
The Cold Spring.
They had arrived.
But Jiang Muchen didn't move.
His eyes fixed on the ground near the spring.
Scattered across the stone lay ice-blue scales—each palm-sized, edges sharp as blades.
Ice-scale serpent scales.
And more than one serpent had shed them.
This spring was guarded.
The true danger had only just begun.
Tongue Dao Maxim
The most precious thing is rarely the spring itself—
but the ground beside it, trampled again and again,
silently telling you how many reached this far…
and how many never returned.